The Necromancers eBook

First, the boy must be convinced; next, he must be
attached to the cause; thirdly, his religion must
be knocked out of him; fourthly, he must be trained
and developed. But for the present he must not
be allowed to go into trance if it could be prevented.
It was plain, he thought, that Laurie had a very strong
“affinity,” as he would have said, with
the disembodied spirit of a certain “Amy Nugent.”
His communication with her had been of a very startling
nature in its rapidity and perfection. Real progress
might be made, then, through this channel.

* * * *
*

Yes; I am aware that this sounds grotesque nonsense.

II

Laurie came back to town in a condition of interior
quietness that rather astonished him. He had
said to Maggie that he was not convinced; and that
was true so far as he knew. Intellectually, the
spiritualistic theory was at present only the hypothesis
that seemed the most reasonable; yet morally he was
as convinced of its truth as of anything in the world.
And this showed itself by the quietness in which he
found his soul plunged.

Moral conviction—­that conviction on which
a man acts—­does not always coincide with
the intellectual process. Occasionally it outruns
it; occasionally lags behind; and the first sign of
its arrival is the cessation of strain. The intellect
may still be busy, arranging, sorting, and classifying;
but the thing itself is done, and the soul leans back.

A certain amount of excitement made itself felt when
he found Mr. Vincent’s letter waiting for his
arrival to congratulate him on his decision, and to
beg him to be at Queen’s Gate not later than
half-past eight o’clock on the following Sunday;
but it was not more than momentary. He knew the
thing to be inevitably true now; the time and place
at which it manifested itself was not supremely important.

Yes, he wrote in answer; he would certainly keep the
appointment suggested.

He dined out at a restaurant, returned to his rooms,
and sat down to arrange his ideas.

* * * *
*

These, to be frank, were not very many, nor very profound.

He had already, in the days that had passed since
his shock, no lighter because expected, when he had
learned from Maggie that the test was fulfilled, and
that a fact known to no one present, not even himself,
in Queen’s Gate, had been communicated through
his lips—­since that time the idea had become
familiar that the veil between this world and the
next was a very thin one. After all, a large
number of persons in the world believe that, as it
is; and they are not, in consequence, in a continuous
state of exaltation. Laurie had learned this,
he thought, experimentally. Very well, then, that
was so; there was no more to be said.